If you are curious, the number #1 beneficiary of USAID is Ukraine, by far, and just behind #2 is Israel.

Sounds more like foreign influence than actual survival help. Maybe USAID even funded wars, and caused more death and chaos, who knows. Difficult to predict what's next. Perhaps it will be good because countries will adapt and shine, instead of having local dictators surviving on these aids, etc.

Also, there is a thing about people depending on you:

I am feeding birds during winter, so at some point they depend on my food. Should have I had started feeding them at all or not ?

If I didn't feed them, technically less birds would have died because they would never had a chance to live...

Except Israel is an economically sound and undamaged country who has the upper hand against its enemies and Ukraine has been invaded and is the underdog of in this war ?

It doesn't look that weird to me that humanitarian assistance would go to people who need it the most ? Do Israelis currently need heaters not to die from the cold after their energy system has been destroyed ?

It's as if helping populations in need would buy you goodwill and popularity. Crazy to thing about it. I don't see how program trying to contain the spread of AIDS or preventing people to die from the cold is "funding" war. Not sure what you are on about. People will not adapt and shine, they will die or be more miserable, or revolt and probably be crushed. Civil war is always an option too.

But your bird comment tells me you just don't care. You should have started with that.

The comments above mine were blaming USAID saying that it caused more damage because it existed and made people became dependent on it, and (in their logic) that it would have been better if it did not exist.

If you look above you can see the whole concept “people die because of USAID”. It’s not my concept.

I am showing with the bird analogy how this is absurd. That you always have the choice to feed the birds or not.

At the end, it’s still a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type of dilemma, like all important political interactions.

Nobody knows if the long-term impact will be positive or negative. It can push countries to take care of their population, to have new coalitions of countries (what if China double-down and offer more aid ?), etc.

Pretty much unknown. I hope it will eventually work out for the innocents who are victims of politicians who are in comfy places.

The comment above you made a much more apt analogy with being bone marrow donor.

In your logic, you should have never "fed the birds" to start with but the people giving birth to children in f** up places are not going. "Mmmm I may wait for having that child on whether humanitarian aid will come" or "The likelihood of civi war is big in my country, I will wait for a safer period". They just have the child. Also those people may want to live too since they are already alive.

So just like for birds, not feeding them because it would create a population that cannot sustain itself would mean having lots of birds dying. Also I like to live in a world where some humans are not considered as birds.

> Nobody knows if the long-term impact will be positive or negative. It can push countries to take care of their population, to have new coalitions of countries (what if China double-down and offer more aid ?), etc.

Sure but that's besides the point the whole point of the parent was introducing the complexity of, once you have given some aid, you are responsible for the deaths you caused if you pull it out too quickly for the recipients to adapt. As others have said it's not like the US have coordinated themselves and given time to have other countries to share that load more evenly. Also it seems with administration, a lot of the time, cruelty is the point: Showing your base you are hurting their preferred target instead of actually being efficient. An example of that would be the handling of illegal immigration. A big spectacle but a needlessly cruel and inefficient one.